


Iced Over Heartache

by QuagmireMarch



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: F/M, mentions of fertility issues and miscarriage, sort of pre-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:56:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27169645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuagmireMarch/pseuds/QuagmireMarch
Summary: Lilia and Yakov's marriage ended long ago, but the love between them never did. Now, Lilia contemplates a way back to what they lost.
Relationships: Lilia Baranovskaya/Yakov Feltsman
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Iced Over Heartache

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ScribblesInTheMargins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribblesInTheMargins/gifts).



Ultimately, Lilia knew, Victor Nikiforov destroyed her marriage. Not intentionally, of course. Barely ten, he’d been a lovely, charming little boy when Yakov and Lilia met him. Just a child. And that had been the problem, because Yakov had longed for them to have children of their own since the early days of the marriage.

Lilia wanted them, too, but not enough to sacrifice her career, and by the time she’d gotten old enough to make space for such things dance and its dietary demands had left her body scarred and damaged in ways that made conceiving difficult.

He never said as much, but Lilia knew Yakov blamed her for each failed pregnancy, every lost hope. How could he not when she blamed herself just as much.

Had Victor come just a little later in their trials, or belonged just a little less to the ice, he might have also been their salvation. A lonely child that needed parents as much as they need a kid to love. But, that had not been the boy’s nature. Driven, passionate, and completely a creature of skating, Lilia found no entryway into his heart.

And, perhaps, in her most honest moments, she admitted she’d offered even less ways into her own, jealous of the time Yakov gave, of the reminders Victor offered of what their own children could have had or been. Hurt in the ways he reminded her of her own failures.

She pushed Victor away with a self-protective violence she only recognized so many years later. What she never intended, even then, was for Yakov to be shoved aside with him. For the point to come that he felt forced to choose.

When he chose her, she hated him for it. For abandoning all they could never have, all that Victor represented. It felt like an accusation. So, she left.

It took fifteen years to gather the strength to look back. Fifteen years and a mistake. The phone rang during a busy moment, an unrecognized number. She answered.

“Good afternoon. This is Lilia Baranovskaya.”

A long pause followed by a deep breath. “Lilia, it is Yakov. I would like to hire a choreographer.”

Lilia ran a successful company full of talented dancers and choreographers. Any other day one of them might have answered, taken the details, given an estimate. She’d likely never have even known unless she looked for his name in the records.

She always looked, even after all these years.

“I see,” she said, voice cold as a glacier and fragile as a snowflake. “I assume for a skater then. Does he have dance training?”

“Yes, to both. He’s...talented in ballet. Making his senior debut in the Grand Prix. He’s fifteen.”

Lilia’s eyebrow rose. The boy had to be very talented indeed to be moving out of juniors so young. Yakov usually delayed as long as possible, after all growth spurts when he could. “If I come, if he is acceptable, I will expect nothing short of complete dedication.”  
  


“You?” The word came out as a gasp, and he continued in a hurry. “Yes, of course. Whatever you need.”

“His name?” Lilia clenched her hands on the desk, desperate to keep her voice even.

“Yuri Plisetsky.” A tight quality to his voice, Lilia imagined Yakov gritting his teeth. She didn’t dare hope she might know why.

She took a deep breath and lied. “I hope you aren’t just doing this because you think it will change anything between us.”

Silence. Long and heavy even across the phone line. “When should we expect you?”

Lilia smiled. Unlike her, Yakov rarely lied, even to himself. He just refused to address the issue entirely. Which meant, on some level, in some way, even after all this time, he still wanted her.

She hadn’t even realized until that moment how much she wanted him, too. They’d go slow, test the waters. See how much pain still lay between them and if there might be a path through it. “Soon.”

And then Lilia hung up. She needed a moment to adjust to all the truths one simple call had laid bare, a minute to overcome fear and embrace hope.

Yes, long ago Victor Nikiforov had helped tear her and Yakov apart. But now, with so many years to heal, perhaps Yuri Plisetsky could help put them back together.  
  
  



End file.
